Love And Honey: How A Young Couple Created A $1 Million-Plus Artisanal Food Business

The married couple run Tropical Traders Specialty Foods, which produces two brands: Royal Hawaiian Honey and Bee Well Honey. Although they are the only full-time employees at the honey packing firm in Oakland, Calif., they are on track to bring in more than $1 million in revenue for 2015.

That puts them in elite company. U.S. Census Bureau statistics released this year show there were 30,174 “nonemployer” firms that hit $1 million to $2,499,999 in revenue 2013–up from 26,744 in 2011. Nonemployer firms are those where the only employees are the owners.

The couple didn’t expect to work in the honey business when they started out. Krones, who had studied art history at Oberlin College, was working as operations manager in an art gallery, while Zevallos, a soux chef, was working in a restaurant in the San Francisco Bay area when they spotted an opportunity to team up with her father, a beekeeper.

Krones’ father, Michael Krones, owns a farm on the big island of Hawaii and produces queen bees for exports for the agricultural sector in the U.S. and Canada. “Honey is a natural byproduct of his work,” says Krones. At his company Hawaiian Queen Co., he was selling it in 55-gallon drums at the time.

The couple realized they could build a retail brand around the honey that his business, the Hawaiian Queen Co., produced. In 2005, they began to work on marketing Royal Hawaiian Honey and started selling it through an online retail site and directly to retailers on the big island of Hawaii. Krones was 27 at the time.

Gradually, they found their focus: raw and certified organic honey. “There’s a growing base of honey consumers in the U.S. that want honey that is closer to the way bees produce it,” says Krones. “That’s basically our niche.”